


Remission

by MaidenMotherCrone



Series: Diagnosis: A Medical Dramedy [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medical, But like not ANGSTY per se, Character Study, Healer Bellatrix Black Lestranger, Healer Everyone, Healer Harry Potter, Inspired by Grey's Anatomy, M/M, Much more serious than Diagnosis, POV Bellatrix Black Lestrange, POV Outsider, St Mungo's Hospital, Surreal, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 08:00:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaidenMotherCrone/pseuds/MaidenMotherCrone
Summary: in which Bellatrix learns how to stop being ‘in love’ with Tom Riddle, and lets him be for-real in love with someone else.





	Remission

Sometimes, in the witching hours, Bellatrix Black thinks about her life. She always thinks about it in two parts: before-Tom and after-Tom. She thinks about it in this way because it is the easiest way to think about the winding road that led from the ancestral home of the House of Black to the glass atrium of St. Mungo’s.

So, she thinks about her life in two parts: Before-Tom. After-Tom.

That is not to say that her life revolves around Tom Riddle—at least, not anymore.

She is in love. This, she also thinks about. She is in love with Rodolphus Lestrange, but it is easier to think about her life in before-Tom and after-Tom, because while she knew Rodolphus in both parts, but it only _ meant _ something after she had met Tom. She had met Tom, and she had been taught what love was and what it wasn’t, so when she finally _ had _Rodolphus, she knew.

She knew that he meant every word when he whispered into the shell of her ear, _ I will love you until the end of time. _

Before-Tom was when she was the perfect heiress. She was her mother and father’s child, the eldest of three girls, and she led them as best as she could. She ruled them with the iron fist of her father and the monied gaze of her mother. And Narcissa and Andromeda fell in line because they loved her, and for all that she couldn’t show it—because Bellatrix was neurotic from the start—Bellatrix adored them back.

Bellatrix can admit that she had been—if not bigoted—ignorant. Blood had meant something, even if it wasn’t something to be said in mixed company. So, Bellatrix had only ever been friends with other children like her. That meant the Lestranges. Bellatrix had led them on her curse-breaker adventures through the gardens and had played Dark Lady too.

Sometimes, Bellatrix thinks that Rodolphus has always been in love with her, because she remembered. She _ remembered _the way he’d watch her like she could end his world and he’d be glad for it. It would be the trio of them—Bellatrix and Rodolphus, and Rabastan trailing after them, dancing through the gardens. They would run and jump and forget all about manners and etiquette and pureblood. They were children, and the world was reduced to the smell of lavender and peals of laughter. The world was simple.

After-Tom is more complicated.

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

Hogwarts, the in-between, doesn’t matter.

Except, it does.

_ (Bellatrix pretends it doesn’t, because it’s easier.) _

Hogwarts is the day she meets Tom, on the train. Even when they were young, she thought him handsome. Pale with a narrow face and an aristocratic nose, the baby fat along his cheekbones already beginning to melt away. But, it was his eyes—burgundy—that made her stay, sliding into the compartment without a single word. She fell upon the opposite seat and look over at him.

“I’m Bellatrix Black of House Black,” she had declared, raising her pointy nose. “You must be foreign. I know _ all _of the purebloods.”

“I’m not a pureblood,” he’d said back, crisp and clear, except there was a tinge of something _ dirty _to his accent. Almost South London, though he was careful to hide it.

Bellatrix had been appalled and intrigued in equal measure.

“What’s your name, then?” she’d demanded.

“Tom Riddle.”

“You must be a Mudbl—Muggleborn,” she’d said. She’d leaned forward, looking him up and down, and knew then. “You’ll be a Slytherin then. So, will I. We must be friends.”

“We must?” he’d asked with a wry twist to his mouth.

“We must.”

And that had been that.

It isn’t right to say that she’d fallen in love with him that very moment, but Bellatrix had always been drawn to him. She’d prided herself on becoming his friend the very first day, ignoring the prejudices that echoed in her head, with her father’s voice, because she’d known that it couldn’t be quite right. She’d known because Tom Riddle was _ special _, and the whole world saw it too.

But, Bellatrix—she’d seen it first, even before Rodolphus.

And even though, Rodolphus and Tom were considered the best of friends, Bellatrix had been his first, and that was _ hers _.

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

Bellatrix doesn’t remember why she wanted to be a Healer.

She remembers that Tom had said that they would be good at it—the three of them. She remembers thinking that was true. She remembers Healing Rabastan’s broken nose once, after a fight with a Gryffindor and feeling exhilarated.

Most of all, she remembers being in love with Tom Riddle.

She remembers that it hadn’t happened the moment they’d met, but it _ had _happened, all at once.

She remembers being barely seventeen and their lips touching, and their bodies kissing, and sweat and sex. She remembers how he made her cum, when no other guy had ever done that. She remembers happiness and knowing that Tom was right—they _ would _be good at it. Healing. Being together.

Taking on the world.

So, the three of them had entered St. Mungo’s, and been a team, like they always had been, because it was inevitable. The three of them rent an apartment together. Rodolphus always cooks because Tom is too much of a snob, and Bellatrix hates doing House Elf work, especially when they _ have a House Elf _!

_ (Breakfast is always the same. Croissants. Earl Grey. Coffee. Eggs for Rodolphus. Tom hates eggs.) _

They fit into their professions perfectly. She’s a Mediwizard, fast-paced and brutal and in the moment. It takes power to keep a man alive, to keep him from the brink of death so that someone with a more fine hand can reassemble him. Rodolphus is there with her, and that sounds right, feels right.

Tom Riddle is a Spell Damage specialist, because he chases glory. He chases glory and Death, because they go hand-in-hand, for him, for them, _ for (him, she remembers a day, when they are 18, when his patient dies, and he weeps in her arms, soaks the collar of her shirt in salt, it’s the only time she’s ever seen him cry, she thinks it’s the first and the last). _

She wants to be everything for him. She wants to be his everything. His end. His beginning. His center. And Bellatrix never wants to remember that day again, that day where she couldn’t stop the salt, where it was all that was left of him, until she could only smell the bitterness that was left afterwards. She wants croissants and his light.

Bellatrix Black is an heiress, but she’ll make herself into a puzzle piece to fit into his greatness. She’ll fold herself, cut parts of herself away, to fit the shape of his shadow.

_ Tom _—

And then, she’s not enough, not for him.

She finds something that she _ is _enough for.

She ruins everything.

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

The first time Bellatrix sees Harry Potter, she is stomping back from her sabbatical with a terrible smile on her face. Tom is touching him and he leans down, Harry Potter’s face cradled in his hands like fine porcelain. And when he kisses him, when her Tom _ kisses _him, she feels her heart break, because this—Tom has never treated anything like it was delicate in his entire life. She hadn’t known that he knew the meaning of the word.

And here he was, treating this _ boy _like he was precious. The most precious thing.

He touches this boy like he could shatter, like touching this boy would make him shatter, and Bellatrix wants to break them in two.

She’s surprised by this. She wants to make Tom _ hurt _, and she wants to break this boy too.

So, she pastes on her smile again, from where it fell, and puts away the name to that feeling—that one, there, that makes her stomach twist, that makes bile churn in her gut—and she sashays across the brand new atrium.

Finally, Tom pulls himself out of his pint-shaped world—the boy is short, shorter than both Bellatrix and her Tom, which is unusual, because Bellatrix didn’t think that Tom liked short people—and she still knows him. She can read rage and pride and then, he looks _ away _from her.

He looks down at the boy and she reads his lips.

That’s what really makes her angry. That’s when she fucking _ knows _ that this isn’t a game.

The words she reads on his lips: _ I’m so sorry. _

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

Harry Potter’s hands are in Tom’s chest, and for a moment, in the most id part of her brain, Bellatrix burns with jealousy. They have been as close as they possibly can be, and Bellatrix used to aspire to be that close to Tom, to burrow into him and lay in the space between his lungs. She used to aspire to that, and then, she sees the look in Harry Potter’s eyes.

There is terror there. And there is determination. Such determination when Bellatrix has already given up on Tom. She clings to Rodolphus, her anchor, her rock, and wonders if that’s what Tom is to Harry. If that’s why he fights so, so _ hard _.

And Harry weaves miracles through the air with magic, commanding the magical theatre in a way that Bellatrix never has. Bellatrix knew that he was talented, she had recognized that the moment she’d seen him on her rotation, but this is something that she had only ever seen with Tom—talent and greatness and something _ more, _something unnameable.

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

Tom keeps a chest on his desk, locked up with magic and iron. There’s a tiny plaque on it and etched in Harry Potter’s writing is ‘PROOF THAT TOM RIDDLE HAS A HEART’.

Bellatrix laughs the first time she sees it, and thinks, _ Proof that Tom Riddle has a heart, and it belongs to you. Be grateful. It’s a lovely one. _

The second time she sees it, she presses her hand to the box, when Tom steps out. She can feel his heartbeat in there—the monster heart that Harry Potter pulled from his chest.

She wonders why Tom kept it: for Harry’s sake or his own.

_ (Sometimes, she thinks, maybe she doesn’t know Tom at all.) _

** _Remission_ **

Bellatrix works with Harry Potter, and she learns about him too. He’ll be in Tom’s life, she knows that now. She knows that for Tom, Harry Potter is _ it _. She can see it in the way his burgundy eyes soften, the way the harshest parts of his voice round out for him. She can see it in the way Tom’s long finger brush across Harry Potter’s fringe.

She learns that Harry Potter used to suffer from the largest of inferiority complexes.

“Lily Evan’s son?” they ask, when they see him as their Healer, and he smiles, thin-lipped.

Then, he says, “No. The co-creator of the Frankenstein Method,” until they realize his greatness.

She learns that he is fiercely loyal to and protective of his friends.

“Your friend, Granger?” she asks, just after the Diggory event. Bellatrix watches with Harry Potter, watches as Granger paces, holding a cigarette to her lips. There are three buds littered at her feet, and Granger closes her eyes and takes another ragged drag. She’s chanting, _ I can’t get up, I will get up, I _ must _ get up _ . Bellatrix cringes from it. “Is she... _ well enough _, for this job?”

Harry Potter glares at Bellatrix. “Why would you ask that?” he demands, fast and vicious.

“Because she’s clearly not mentally sound,” Bellatrix deadpans. She heard about what happened in the theatre.

Everyone had heard what happened in that theatre.

“She’s one of the brightest witches of my generation. She’s _ excellent _at her job. Tom wouldn’t be alive if she wasn’t,” he snarls.

Bellatrix almost flinches, because she doesn’t want another reminder. She doesn’t want to remember that Tom is still too exhausted to be out of bed for more than an hour at a time, just yet. So, she glares down at Harry freaking Potter.

“Mind your elders, brat,” she barks.

“Don’t be an arse,” he retorts. He’s not afraid for his job anymore.

Harry Potter could never be, when it meant his friends.

_ (It’s something they have in common.) _

The last thing she learns about Harry Potter, is his defining characteristic: Harry Potter feels _ deeply _.

Sometimes, it’s terrifying to know that someone can feel so fucking much.

It’s something that she knows—she’s always known, she remembers what it looked like, his hands in Tom’s chest—but to see it, is too much.

It happens like this:

Bellatrix sits on the edge of a floating gurney as they crash into the magical theatre. She expects it to be Tom, standing there, receiving her patient, a young Auror, barely out of training. She knows that this is a result of his own ill judgment, crashing headfirst into duels with much stronger wizards and witches, for the concept of recognition.

But, she doesn’t judge in that moment. She’s a mediwizard, a Healer. She will do her job.

And so will Harry Potter. He sees the Dark remnants of the Floris Curse, somehow manipulated to resemble Hanahaki. He sees the vines and flowers writhing underneath the young Auror’s skin, and he gets to work.

“_ Moudiasménos, _ ” he snarls, anesthetizing the Auror before pulling his wand down the slim body, cutting through cloth and flesh. “How the fuck did _ this _happen?”

“Headstrong junior Auror just leapt into the fray,” Bellatrix mutters. She sighs, shaking her head. “I only work with hitwizards, but he is...far gone.”

She’d done all she could in the field. She was no Spell Damage specialist. She watches, covered in mulch and blood, curious as the vines spiral outward, jerking violently against the delicate softness of the Auror’s organs.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Mediwizard Black?” Harry Potter asks, eyes narrowed as he cuts through the vines, rooting through the body to find the base of the curse, ready to yank it out, root and stem.

“His heart stopped twice,” she said. “I can cast the diagnostics charm for you again.”

“That won’t be necessary, _ thank you _,” he says, clearly on edge. There’s something panicked yet controlled about he moves methodically.

Bellatrix has other things to do. Discharge papers to sign, she’s sure. Instead, she watches as it all falls apart.

She knows that the young Auror is going to die. She knows that Harry Potter knows too.

He doesn’t stop until the vines do, having nothing else to feast on.

Harry _ freaking _ Potter— _ Harry _ —stares and then casts a _ Tempus _.

“Time of death: 16:42,” he declares under his breath before he turns away, brushing the back of his hand across his sweat damp forehead.

He looks _ exhausted _.

“There was too much damage,” he says without looking at her. He’s still staring at the junior Auror—practically a boy, and yet, everyone is a child to Bellatrix sometimes. Except...Harry. “More damage being caused each time I tried to repair. I couldn’t find the roots.”

“They were burrowed in his spine and brain stem, most likely. He was hit from behind. He was never going to make it,” Bellatrix says. She tilts her head as she stares at him, long and hard. “Better Healers would’ve stopped long before you. And given him a mercy killing.” She adds that last part.

Harry closes his eyes and take a deep noisy breath. “I took an oath. My job was to keep him alive. And when that didn’t work, I anesthetized his pain again. I let him die with dignity.”

Harry gently covers the junior Auror in a sheet.

_ Dignity, _Bellatrix thinks.

Harry Potter feels deeply, she thinks. 

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

It’s after Tom has recovered, a month or two into his tenure as Head Healer, that she asks.

She sits in his office, feet propped up on his desk as he goes through paperwork, complaining under his breath about dealing with the Board, having to see Blaise Zabini once a month and the other investors. He mumbles about his meeting with the Minister next week too, because he can’t stand bureaucracy, nevermind that he’s the hospital’s new _ face _of the dreaded system.

“Tom,” she says.

“If you say something _ inane _about Rodolphus—”

“Why didn’t we work?” she asks.

Tom pauses, looking up from the paperwork he was reading over. He stares at her with burgundy eyes, and she wondered how she was ever able to read him before; now, she can’t parse out a single thing.

Bellatrix refuses to flinch under the weight of his stare.

“Bellatrix,” he says.

He stops.

“What does Harry have that I don’t?”

“Does it matter?” he asks.

She has Rodolphus. She’s a successful Mediwizard. She has her best friend back. She loves her life.

And yet.

“No,” she decides. “But I want to know anyway.”

Tom sets his papers aside as he stares at her for a long time. He leans forward, balancing his chin on a fist.

She isn’t in love with him anymore. As she looks at him, she can remember why she was.

“Would you have been satisfied?” he asks. “Being with me. _ Me _.”

_ He. _

Tom Riddle is a Healer. One of the greatest Healers to walk the planet. He is glory and gore. He is the type of man that her father had wanted for her. He is the type of man that she used to think she wanted for herself. She would’ve done anything to be who he needed, if she could, if she knew what it was he _ wanted _.

“Yes,” she decides.

Tom’s lips curl into a humorless smile. “That’s why we didn’t work,” Tom says. “He would never settle for what I could give.”

“So, he’s demanding?” she asks, half-teasing, half-earnest.

Tom barked out a laugh. “Maybe. I mean…he is never satisfied. And he would never settle into the shadow of my glory, not when he could have his own.”

He says it like they’re forever.

“I’m sorry,” she says, voice tiny.

She isn’t sure what she’s apologizing for—nothing. _ Everything _.

For a moment, Tom looks old. He stares at her for a long time, and then, almost like he hasn’t said it all, she hears, “So am I.”

And she isn’t sure what _ he’s _ apologizing for—everything. _ Nothing. _

Bellatrix doesn’t know what forever means, for Tom, when she’s not a part of it—she wonders if his life is set up like hers: before-Harry and after-Harry.

* * *

**REMISSION**

* * *

The moment that Bellatrix knows—knows for _ sure _, because she has always doubted—that they are forever goes like this:

She sits in Tom’s kitchen, flashing her shiny engagement ring. The diamond and dragon’s gold looks glorious on her finger. Rodolphus knows her. He knows her so well. He is perfect for her, to her, and she for him, to him, even when they bicker and argue. Rodolphus sips his tea, his hand resting on her thigh as he recounts the proposal to Tom as if the man hadn’t helped him plan it out to the tenth of a second.

Harry Potter is scraping neon yellow eggs onto a plate. There is only enough for one person.

“Here,” Harry sighs. He looks barely awake. Tom finishes making his tea and then promptly passes it to Harry. Harry takes it gratefully and presses a stray kiss that misses its mark, and lands on Tom’s cheekbone.

Tom dutifully takes up his fork and begins to eat the eggs.

Bellatrix frowns.

“You hate eggs,” she says.

Tom looks up, raising an eyebrow. Harry blinks once and turns to Tom, raising an eyebrow.

“Do you hate eggs, Tom?” he asks, like he’s fighting a smile.

Tom purses his lips. “No,” he says, sharp and clipped. He cuts a gaze to Bellatrix, a warning, but Bellatrix ignores it, plucking Tom’s fork from his fingers.

She shovels the eggs into her mouth and then has to stop herself from spitting it back up. They are slimy and crunchy—both undercooked and far too cooked—and oily all over. They barely resemble eggs. There are salvageable bits, but not much. Tom is watching her, eyes narrowed, and he snatches the fork from her fingers.

Rodolphus’ gaze goes back and forth like they’re an interesting Quidditch match.

Tom looks up at Harry.

“I don’t hate your eggs,” Tom says, very carefully monotone.

Harry laughs, quiet and soft and intimate, and Bellatrix feels like she’s intruding.

“I must’ve...well, it’s been years since Hogwarts. Taste changes,” Bellatrix says dismissively. Tom nods.

Bellatrix separates her life in two parts: before-Tom and after-Tom. After-Tom is when she learns a language that isn’t her own, for the first time, when she has to learn how to communicate instead of dictating. She knows Tom, just as well as she knows Rodolphus, if not more because she knew the _ worst _of him. But, Harry Potter, well, he knew the best and the worst, so he knew Tom best.

When Bellatrix looks at Harry Potter, she knows that he’s heard the words beneath the spoken.

When Tom looks at Harry Potter, every word sounds like glory and a _ I’m going to marry you one day. _

Bellatrix Black—soon to be Lestrange—finds she doesn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, after almost a year of radio silence on my Diagnosis one-shots, here's the first one: Remission.
> 
> I really wanted to do something that was about Bellatrix and Tom's relationship, and her observations on their relationship.
> 
> Anyway, the next installment will be much more fun. It's all about Tom and Harry and SEX/PWP lol. That'll be called 'medicine'.
> 
> SPELLS MENTIONED:  
Floris Curse from The Monster Blog of Monsters (https://themonsterblogofmonsters.tumblr.com/tagged/floris%20curse)


End file.
